


And if I can't have everything, well, then just give me a taste

by SharpestRose



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-29
Updated: 2011-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:24:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Are you *hacking* into *vampire mind control*?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	And if I can't have everything, well, then just give me a taste

It's just his luck, of course. Getting sick only a couple of days out from when he's supposed to fly to California.

First symptom Eduardo notices is a bunch of purplish blotches on his throat and arms. They look almost exactly like hickeys, so he's almost grateful for the nausea that comes along right after them -- at least it'll prove to Christy that he really is sick, and not somehow clandestinely playing the field between his incredibly long days trying to sweet-talk investors and his nights trying to catch some sleep despite the racing trains of thought in his head.

He stops being grateful for the nausea after he throws up, because the toilet bowl is full of blood, like he's dying of fucking Ebola or something. Talk about the best luck in the world.

The blood in the bowl smells _so fucking good_.

Eduardo's stomach heaves again and he pukes a second time, bringing up more bright red liquid. He flushes it all away, hoping the surreal reactions his body's having will go away as well.

He needs to get to his phone on the nightstand, to call someone. 911 or Mark or Christy or _somebody_. The tiny bathroom of his tiny apartment is whirling and dipping woozily around him.

Eduardo slides his back up the bathroom wall until he's standing, taking a shaky step back into his room and then another, staggering slowly.

He makes it to the bed and collapses down, exhausted and foggy-headed. He can't remember who he was going to phone, but it doesn't matter. He'll call them when he wakes up. He's so tired, he'll just sleep for a minute.

When he wakes again, the world is very loud, and he is very hungry. Groaning, Eduardo sits up. His mouth tastes disgusting and his head aches, but at least he's alive which is a good start. Probably not Ebola, then.

There are fifteen unread messages on his phone. Most are from Christy, but there's one from the airline with a standard reminder about impending travel. _Fuck_. He's slept for nearly forty hours. Any longer and he'd've missed the flight to California completely.

Probably he's violating some federal law or another, flying while he's sick with whatever superbug it is he's got, but Eduardo is pretty sure that Mark wouldn't consider federal law a sufficient reason to break an appointment.

Not that Mark consistently remembers the need to go to appointments, but when he does he remembers in _stone_.

At least the hickey-blotches are gone.

Eduardo should probably give them a call in Palo Alto, make sure that everything's okay over there. One thing he does not need right now is for anything else to go wrong.

Three rings and then --

"Hello?"

Eduardo sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Put Mark on the phone."

"He's wired in," Sean answers in that smarmy shit-eating tone of his that makes Eduardo want to punch him. "I should really only interrupt him for important things."

"Put Mark on the phone," Eduardo repeats, his own voice a low threatening growl. He hopes that Sean can hear the unspoken _or so help me I will rip out your throat with nothing but my teeth_.

Eduardo feels like he could really do it, too. Bite down hard on Sean's jugular vein, breaking the skin like it was flimsy as the skin of a pear. Even if there were trace amounts of drugs in Sean's blood, it would still be rich and healthy and hot and --

"Wardo?" Mark's voice says, impatiently.

"You're picking me up when my flight lands," Eduardo reminds him. "The forecast says clear weather but they're wrong over half the time when the preceding week's looked like the one you've just had out there. So don't do that thing you always do of forgetting me and leaving me waiting."

By the end of his words the angry serration is back, the threat. Maybe he's even more stressed out than he realized, even if that last investor meeting before he got sick had gone really well. They'd even all gone out for drinks, after.

Arriving at the club with the entourage is the last thing Eduardo can remember before waking up with the plague, actually.

"Wardo," Mark says again, snappish even by his sharp standards. Eduardo finds himself answering "Yes, what?" before he's even properly registered that Mark's spoken. His posture straightens a little as he awaits whatever Mark's going to say.

It's sort of creepy, like Mark's voice has a direct line to Eduardo's nervous system without Eduardo's brain being involved.

Mark is silent for a few long seconds. Eduardo swears that he can hear typing and soft laughter in the background on the other end of the line, but there's no way the phone connection's that good, even if his still-unwell body has decided to ramp up the sensory input to 11.

"I'll be there to pick you up," Mark promises, his voice oddly hoarse.

\-------------------------------------

Shit.

He could be wrong. It's possible. But it's unlikely.

 _Shit_.

Mark clears his throat. "Don't answer your phone for anyone but me. Not even Christy."

"Okay," Wardo answers without missing a beat.

"And don't eat or drink anything until I pick you up. Anything. Do you understand?"

"Okay," comes the reply a second time, in the same mild tones as the first.

Mark paces the length of the hallway, ignoring the sounds of laughter and random crashes audible from the rest of the house. "Go get your flight, Wardo. See you when you land."

After he ends the call, Mark heads for the front door, grabbing Sean's keys off the top of the microwave as he goes. "I'm borrowing your car."

"Aren't you in the middle of coding?" Sean sounds concerned. "You shouldn't let him push you around like that."

"I don't know when I'll be back," replies Mark. "It'll be a while. Dustin can finish the stuff I was working on." He holds up Sean's keys as he opens the front door and steps outside. Ugh. Fucking afternoon sunshine. He hopes Wardo was right, and it'll rain later instead. "I'll fill the gas tank before I bring it back."

He heads out before Sean can find excuses to hold him up. Mark's pissed about being interrupted, peevish as a child whose game has been halted midway, but he knows it's not Eduardo's fault. This is all some other asshole's doing, and Mark has _much_ bigger bones to pick with whomever that is than just derailing a pleasant few hours of being wired in.

Worrying about Wardo will be a pointless waste of energy. There are hours and hours until the flight's due in, and Mark distracts himself with hunting.

So many people are on the hustle all the time. Mark appreciates his own ability to bring directness to transactions: he just goes in and takes what he wants, cutting through all the games and contradictory cues and bullshit.

\-------------------------------------

Mark is eating a red vine and says "You look terrible. Give me your phone."

Eduardo hands it over. "I didn't use it."

"Just making sure," Mark says absently, turning it on and scrolling through the recent numbers list with one thumb, still twirling the candy in his other hand.

"Are the lights in airports always this bright?" Eduardo asks, rubbing at his eyes. He didn't have anything to drink on the plane, not even water, and the two aspirin he swallowed dry don't seem to have kicked in at all.

Mark looks up from the phone, closing and stowing it away in the pocket of his completely superfluous hoodie. He inclines his head in the direction of the wide glass doors leading to the downpour outside.

"Come on."

\-------------------------------------

Wardo practically collapses into the passenger seat of Sean's car, closing his eyes and moving as minimally as possible as Mark navigates their way out of the parking lot.

On his neck, above the collar of his shirt, Wardo has dozens of very faint, very small scars. Puncture wounds, like tiny invisible pock marks. Already perfectly healed, and invisible to all but the best eyesights.

No human will notice them at all.

Mark glances down at his own arms, covered to the wrist with the soft sleeves of his hoodie. There are pock marks there, too, and on his own throat. He's sure that there are similar ones to be found on Wardo's arms. They're a matched set.

The streetlights wash over them as Mark drives out into a fairly deserted set of streets. The brighter lights make Wardo flinch, but he doesn't open his eyes. His face is pale and clammy.

Mark stops the car. This will have to do. If anyone bothers them, it's just that person's unlucky day.

He pulls his hoodie off and throws it out of the way, then raises his own wrist to his mouth and lets his fangs descend. He tears a two-inch gash up the vein and sucks hard at it for a few seconds, to get the blood flowing.

Pulling away, Mark swipes his tongue across his bottom lip and and reaches out with his unharmed hand to shake at Wardo's shoulder.

"Hey."

Wardo opens his eyes, looking groggy and disoriented, but as soon as he looks at Mark's face his posture changes, becomes focused and purposeful instantly as he moves across the space between them. He kisses Mark, licking in his mouth with a frantic whine, trying to get even closer despite his seatbelt holding him back.

Mark smirks a little, pushing Wardo away.

"I appreciate how glad you apparently are to see me, but here." He holds out his bleeding wrist.

Wardo's pupils are blown dark, the paleness of his face broken now by a faint smear of blood across his lower lip from Mark's mouth. He makes another quiet, frantic little sound and puts his mouth to the cut.

\-------------------------------------

It's like being drunk and getting an A and coming and earning one of Mark's smiles and food after hunger and a kiss from a lover and _everything_.

Eduardo loses all sense of time and place as he drinks from Mark's wrist, breathing in when he remembers to but the air smells metallic and sharp and _so good_ and just makes him suck even harder.

That's what stops him, what crashes him back down into reality -- the realisation that his hands are gripping hard at Mark's arm, holding it in place.

"Did I hurt you?" Eduardo ask, raising his head. He sits back in his chair, away from Mark. It's the most difficult thing he's done in a while, probably since the start of summer when he'd had to tell his father that he'd quit the internship. Letting Mark cover the cut on his arm with the palm of his other hand might be even more difficult that that, maybe.

"It'll close in a second," Mark answers him.

"What's happening to me?" It's a dumb question, and Eduardo knows that Mark hates dumb questions, but anything more complicated seems impossible right now.

"Do you remember what potential investors you last met with? Your phone's calendar says it was Mercer & Morgan, is that right?"

Eduardo nods. "Yeah. They were really positive about everything. Took me out for a drink after."

"They clearly decided you were useful. When you're turned into a vampire, once you drink human blood for the first time, the vampire who did the turning controls you. If you hadn't called me when you woke up, and I hadn't ordered you not to drink anything --"

"It probably would have been Christy," Eduardo says, his voice faint to his own ears. "I'd have killed her, wouldn't I?"

Mark nods. "Yes. And then they'd have been able to make you do anything. Freeze the bank account, or sign contracts that fucked us over, or any number of other things. The vampire who turned me wanted me to sell him Synapse."

"But you never sold Synapse."

Mark shrugs. "I've never been very good at doing what I'm told." He starts the car again, driving them away from the quiet streets.

Eduardo rubs a hand over his face, then belated realises he's probably left a sticky smear of blood behind with the gesture. He's apparently not a very tidy eater at the moment. "So what happens to me now? Now that they can -- _fuck_ \-- control me?"

"You haven't bitten anyone human yet, have you?"

"No... Just you."

Mark smiles, triumphant, and glances over for a moment. "Then I can override it."

"Are you _hacking_ into _vampire mind control_?" Eduardo asks, incredulous. "Is that what we're talking about here?"

Mark shrugs again.

Eduardo considers the situation for a few seconds, realisation dawning. "You'd be the one with power over me. Instead of them. That's what you mean, isn't it?"

Mark's jaw twitches. He doesn't look at Eduardo, his eyes fixed on the road. "Yes."

\-------------------------------------

Because of the state of their clothes, Mark decides it'd be best not to go directly back to the house. There are dozens of serviceable motels in the area, and Mark pulls in at one he chooses at random.

He pulls his hoodie back on over his smeared and stained arm -- the cut has already healed, as predicted -- and checks his face in the rearview mirror. Wardo's clothes are a total write-off, so Mark makes him stay in the car as he goes to get them a key.

Once they're in their room, with the door locked and chained behind them, Mark takes the time to properly look at Wardo's face. He's looking a little better, with a bit more colour in him now than at the airport.

Wardo sits down on the edge of one of the room's two queen-sized beds, his own gaze fixed on Mark. Mark starts sucking on a new red vine. Sometimes he thinks about trying that trick of biting the ends off and using a red vine as a straw, like how they used to sometimes do with vodka shots at AEPi. He hasn't yet tried it with blood. He thinks Wardo would probably be grossed out if he suggested it now, though, so he doesn't.

"Why didn't you ever tell me?" Wardo asks, his voice quiet and hurt.

"I didn't want it to be important until it actually was important," Mark answers.

Wardo snorts softly, as if to say _well, you left it a little too long_.

"I was going to tell you when you came out here," confesses Mark. "I needed you... I needed you to come out here of your own choice. I didn't want it to be something I ordered you to do."

Wardo looks skeptical.

"Once you'd come here I was going to tell you," Mark insists. "I was going to make you like this too. We were..." He shakes his head. "It doesn't matter now."

Wardo looks away from him, down at his own hands. "Are you going to do it to Sean?"

"What? No. Why would I do that?"

"Why would you do it to me and not to him?" Wardo asks back.

They're staring at each other now, each of them looking at the other like he's being completely indecipherable. Wardo's the first one to look away

"You know Sean's a manipulative asshole, right?" Wardo mutters stormily.

Mark frowns. "Obviously. Luckily, what he's out to achieve requires him to keep me happy, so he makes my life easier. You never make my life easier. You always want me to be _better_. You're my own personal Jiminy Cricket."

"And Sean's Pleasure Island, I assume."

Mark smirks and shakes his head. "Let's kill the metaphor before you point out that I'm too immoral to ever become a real boy. Also I can't believe you're essentially fighting with Sean when he isn't even here."

"Okay, fine, it doesn't matter," Wardo says dismissively, rubbing his palms on the bedspread either side of him and looking at Mark. "What... what do we need to do to override their programming, or whatever."

"I love it when you talk like you know the first thing about hacking."

That makes Wardo smile a little, exhausted. There's still so much that's alive about him, more than there ever will be again. He won't have turned properly until after he has human blood, but he's already halfway there.

Mark feels a pang in his chest, like he's already begun to miss the young man Wardo was before.

He steps forward, until he's standing between Wardo's legs. The words are halting when he speaks.

"Sensations are different. After. I was young when it happened. Not very experienced, so I'm not a perfect judge, but I'd done some stuff and compared to what I've done since... some of it blunts. The ways you seek... intimacy. They change." He sinks down to his knees, leaning in to unzip Wardo's fly.

Wardo laughs shakily. "Last meal for a dying man, huh?"

Mark gives him a crooked grin. "Something like that."

\-------------------------------------

Eduardo's had probably more than his fair share of good blowjobs in the past -- Christy's a big fan of head, both giving and getting, so that's been the majority of Eduardo's sex life in recent times -- but, as with so many things, introducing Mark into the data set skews the curve dramatically.

Mark's shuddering a little, trembles through his shoulders and his arms, hands resting on Eduardo's thighs. Eduardo puts one of his own hands on top of one of Mark's, trying to settle him a little, calm him down. But Mark just lifts Eduardo's hand to his mouth and nips and sucks at his fingertips, at the delicate, thinner skin where his fingers join his palm. His eyes are dark and glittering in the flat, predatory way he gets sometimes, and Eduardo's own hand starts to shake slightly.

Mark pulls Eduardo's pants and underwear down past his knees, letting them pool on the worn motel carpet as he dips his head down and rubs his lips, spit-shiny and slick, still red from the candy, lightly against the head of Eduardo's dick. Then without warning -- pretty much nothing about Mark ever comes with a warning -- he swallows Eduardo down all the way, one fluid motion that has Eduardo throwing his head back and knotting his fingers in Mark's hair.

" _Mark_ ," he chokes out. Mark hums happily, his hands already in place against Eduardo's hips to hold him still when the humming makes him buck up uncontrollably. The hum becomes deeper, a growl of ownership and claiming. Eduardo's eyes roll back in his head.

"I'm going to come," Eduardo warns an embarrassingly few minutes later, and Mark swallows over and over, throat tight and wet and perfect around Eduardo, and Eduardo's vision whites out for a few seconds as he climaxes.

"Didn't even get out of our clothes all the way. Classy," Mark says as he stands, thumb wiping at his lip.

Eduardo gestures with one boneless hand to Mark's own fairly evident erection and sits further back from the edge of the bed, flopping down onto his back.

"It still feels good for you, right? Even if it's not as good as it would have been if you were... do you want me to? I can't promise a performance equal to yours, holy _shit_ , but I've been told I've got some talent."

Mark climbs onto the bed beside him, shaking his head. "You are not putting your mouth anywhere near my dick until you're incredibly familiar with each and every one of your vampire urges. Blood is sexy, genital amputation less so."

Eduardo huffs a laugh. "Or you can fuck me, if you want. No teeth down there."

Mark gives him a droll look. "I've been told that I'm bad at pillow talk, but I am certain that you just set the bar at a new height for being so much worse."

\-------------------------------------

It's the best sex Mark's ever had. There isn't especially tough competition to beat in that regard -- he'd died, at least technically, a virgin, and estimates that the pleasure derived from sexual acts not involving his mouth is reduced by somewhere between 40-60% compared to what it would be if he were alive. But it's good to know that it can still be enjoyable, can still be fun, can still _oh shit Wardo fuck you feel so good_

Wardo's on his back, one of his stupidly long legs up against Mark's chest and shoulder, the other bent with his foot flat on the bedspread. His skin has already paled from its previous tan and is flushed faintly pink. The high, hectic colour throws his scars into sharper relief.

He's whimpering, head thrown back and his long, lean throat _right there_ , so close that it would take only the smallest shift of position for Mark to strike, to bite down.

"Don't be afraid," Mark says, putting one hand on Wardo's chest, trying to reassure them both that this is okay, this will be okay. "Don't."

Wardo says "Okay." Not like Mark's commanding him, but like he trusts Mark, and Mark lifts Wardo's leg a little higher and leans forward, sliding his teeth into Wardo's skin while Wardo is still getting his bearings from the new angle of Mark's thrusts.

Mark begins to drink, carefully as he can. He can feel Wardo shake and sob, hands scrabbling at his shoulders to hold him in place. Wardo's breath is little broken gasps.

Mark has to drain him slowly. Even when Wardo begs, crying out in feeble shouts now. Mark has to be sure; this has to overwhelm anything that came before.

Finally, he can hear Wardo's breaths get more erratic, and his heart begin to falter. Wardo's body is pliant in his arms -- they've both come at some point, but that doesn't even matter anymore -- as Mark repositions them, Eduardo's back against his chest, so they're spooned together on their sides.

Mark's own heart is rabbit-fast and his arm shakes as he raises it to bite the wrist again.

"No," Wardo slurs, trying to turn, to face Mark.

"Easy, easy." Mark cups the back of Wardo's head with his hand, helping him find the thick vein in Mark's throat with his teeth.

\-------------------------------------

The first thing Eduardo sees when he wakes up is Mark, looking at him with eyes that glimmer dark and bright.

"Hi," Mark says.

Eduardo smiles. "Hi."

"Your smile is still like it was," Mark says. Even Eduardo has trouble reading Mark's tone sometimes, but he sounds surprised.

"Why wouldn't it be?" Eduardo asks, puzzled, smiling again.

The bed around them smells like sex and blood, and Eduardo thinks that they'll probably eventually have to get up. He hopes they don't have to get up too soon, though. He's perfectly happy exactly here.

Mark's expression turns sadder for a fleeting moment, then the blank unreadability descends.

"I need you in California. Please."

Eduardo opens his mouth, the 'yes' automatic in his throat. Then he pauses and, very deliberately, shakes his head. "I need to graduate, Mark."

"We have forever to go back to school," Mark bites out. "Literally forever. I need you."

There are very faint scars on Mark's throat and chest, scars that Eduardo's only able to see now. Secrets of Mark's that have never been open to him before.

He reaches out, fingertips following the path of one of the smears of blood across Mark's pale skin.

"Okay," Eduardo says. "Okay."


End file.
